21C Media Group is delighted to announce that it now represents the Dover Quartet, at what marks a milestone moment in the group’s burgeoning career. Since skyrocketing to attention by sweeping the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the ensemble has enjoyed what Strings magazine calls a “rise to the top [that] looks practically meteoric.” Fast becoming a major presence on the international scene, this season the Dovers give more than 120 concerts around the world, including two upcoming New York debuts: in the Lincoln Center Great Performers series, with a program of Schumann and Shostakovich (Feb 11) and at Carnegie Hall, where they perform Beethoven, Dvorák, and Berg in Weill Recital Hall (April 8). Additional season highlights see the quartet launch a newly created, three-year faculty residency at Northwestern University, embark on its first tour of Israel, undertake three European tours, give its first performances at Yale University and the Lucerne Festival, and perform for many of the most important sponsors in the States. After wowing Washington audiences with last season’s Kennedy Center debut – pronounced “a triumph” by the Washington Post – the ensemble returns to the nation’s capital for four programs at Dumbarton Oaks, two of which showcase Plan & Elevation by Pulitzer Prize-winner Caroline Shaw. Like Pale Blue Dot by David Ludwig, this is a new addition to the chamber repertoire that was recently commissioned for and premiered by the group; as the New Yorker puts it, the Dover Quartet is truly “the young American string quartet of the moment.”

The Dover Quartet plays the original version of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.”

The group first formed in 2008, when its members were still teenagers at Philadelphia’s prestigious Curtis Institute of Music, and its name is a tip of the hat to these shared roots, paying tribute to the song cycle Dover Beach by fellow Curtis alum Samuel Barber. All four quartet members are consummate solo artists: first violinist Joel Link took first prize at the Menuhin Competition, violinist Bryan Lee and violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt have appeared as soloists with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Tokyo Philharmonic respectively, and cellist Camden Shaw released a solo album debut on the Unipheye Music label. Yet together the four achieve something even greater than the sum of their parts. Pajaro-van de Stadt told Strings magazine:

“What makes our group chemistry unique is that every member of our quartet is so much more than just 25 percent of the group. It’s like a chemical reaction where the one different ingredient turns it into a completely different substance altogether.”

As Shaw explains, they discovered that playing as a quartet allowed them to explore music in more depth than individual solo careers would have allowed:

“In a way as a soloist you don’t have the sort of artistic power and freedom that you often think. In a sense, you have … at best maybe two or three rehearsals with an orchestra and then you’re onstage performing. So actually we felt we had more freedom in a quartet where we could spend more time hashing out the details. Really, the sky was the limit in terms of detail and depth” (Colorado Public Radio).

Furthermore, all four musicians share a special affinity for the interpretative style of an earlier generation, citing the venerated Guarneri Quartet as a primary influence. Distinguished by its burnished warmth, incisive rhythms, and natural phrasing, their old-school sound has not escaped critical notice. The Philadelphia Inquirer credits the Dovers with “a sound so distinctive as to be identified within mere minutes.” Calling it “gutsy and earthy,” the Wall Street Journal notes that “the Dover Quartet’s distinctive musical sound contributes mightily to its interpretations.” And the Chicago Tribune concludes: “The Dover Quartet players have it in them to become the next Guarneri Quartet – they’re that good.”

The Dover Quartet (photo: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco)

A mainstay on the festival circuit, over the next two summers the Dovers look forward to week-long residencies at Chamber Music Northwest, the Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Artosphere. Previous festival appearances have taken them to Bravo! Vail, the Bard Music Festival, Music at Menlo, La Jolla SummerFest, and Caramoor, where they were named Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence for 2013-14. That same season, they served as the first quartet-in-residence at their alma mater the Curtis Institute, after undertaking a similar residency at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. The group’s world-class collaborators include pianists Anne-Marie McDermott, Marc-André Hamelin, and Jon Kimura Parker; violists Roberto Díaz, Michael Tree, and Cynthia Phelps; bassist Edgar Meyer; mandolinist Avi Avital; and the Pacifica Quartet. As Strad magazine observes, “With their exceptional interpretative maturity, tonal refinement, and taut ensemble,” the Dovers are “pulling away from their peers.”

All four members of the quartet are actively involved with Music for Food, an initiative enabling musicians to fight hunger in their home communities.